"Theory of theories" approach to string theory.

Abstract

We propose a new formulation of gauge theories as a quantum theory which has the gauge theory action $S$ as its dynamical variable. This system is described by a simple actional $I(S)$ (that is, an action for the action $S$) whose equation of motion gives the Batalin-Vilkovisky (BV) master equation for $S$. Upon quantization we find that our new formulation is reduced to something like a topological field theory having a BRST exact gauge-fixed actional. Therefore the present formulation can reproduce ordinary gauge theories since the path-integral over $S$ is dominated by the classical configuration which satisfies the BV master equation. This ``theory of theories'' formulation is intended to be applied to closed string field theory.